Shades of Grey
by Scott Summers
Summary: Cyclops discovers an old journal of Jean's. *CHAPTER THREE: I'VE READ THE END now up!* please r/r!
1. the fall and rise of jean grey

**

* * *

SHADES OF GREY**

_chapter one: the fall and rise of jean grey_

* * *

For a home which had been completely obliterated, the X-Men's Westchester mansion had certainly managed to fill a room with boxes in San Francisco.

They'd been there for three weeks and no one had touched a one of them.

"The past is the past," Emma had told Cyclops. "You should've left all of it for the garbage men."

But even though he rarely showed it, Summers had quite the sentimental side--and he needed _something _to tie the X-Men of yesterday to the X-Men of tomorrow.

Something to tie the Scott Summers of yesterday to Cyclops.

He'd been so certain about the jump to San Francisco, about his vision for the mutants of the world. Things were hardly about a peaceful co-existence these days -- they were about existence at all.

But for every certainty there was still a wild card; parts of himself he could barely recognize at times... parts of himself that he wasn't sure he really wanted to.

He spoke of it to no one, least of all to Emma. His strong desire to do right by everyone was often seen as a weakness, as an insecurity... but Scott only saw it as a dedication. A pledge and a promise.

He thought about that pledge and how he'd broken it to Alex. How he'd broken it to Kitty. He thought about his son, stranded somewhere in the future with a baby that promised mutantkind a tomorrow, and he thought about Jean.

"Shake it off, Summers," Scott said aloud as he shuffled through the first of the boxes. He'd managed to stay busy enough to think about anything _but _the things he probably _should _have been thinking about.

Maybe that's why Emma didn't want him standing in front of his past, scattered but organized in boxes from every failure, every shortcoming...

No.

They were just boxes, and he would have his future -- and so would mutantkind.

Scott grabbed at a box marked simply "Bobby" and herded it into another corner, smiling at the snowball in place of the "o."

He moved several to a "Hank" pile, others to "Peter" and quite a few to "Gambit and Rogue." Where _were _they? Scott made a mental note to try his best and find out.

As he continued his box-shuffling, Cyclops pulled a small box from the pile marked "Mr. and Mrs. Summers."

He ignored it, lunging farther into the boxes to pull out a "Charles" and even a "Neil." Scott hadn't heard from Neil Sharra, the third mutant to use Thunderbird as a member of the X-Men, for _years_.

He set "Reyes" apart and told himself he'd contact Cecelia's brother, though the X-Men's relationship with ONE was rather strained at the moment. It seemed Val Cooper had more important things to worry about, like clinging to Madrox's X-Factor.

He wondered if Theresa's baby had been born. If she'd given birth to a mutant.

He thought of Cable again, dwelling on the fact that he had no idea where his son actually was.

"Sam."

Scott stood firmly, his knees cracking and back aching. He was beginning to see why Hank had once joked that mutant years weren't unlike dog years when it came to aging, especially when dealing with being a member of the X-Men.

There was an open "Rahne" box, Scott peering inside to see a ruby-tinted polaroid of Wolfsbane and Moira MacTaggart. With all of her troubles lately, Scott thought, it might do Rahne some good to see that.

He set it on the outside of the boxes, his eye catching "Mr. and Mrs. Summers" again.

He ignored it until he found himself at the back row of boxes, six or seven of them marked Jean.

Summers hadn't gone through any of the boxes Ororo packed after her death. Things rarely settled down and he'd spent enough time standing in front of her grave to know that going through her old belongings would only take time away from Emma, adding to time alone.

These were the moments when he felt like an uncertain schoolboy, rags tied across his tightly-clenched eyes in fear of taking someone's head off.

Opening them meant screaming, it meant pain... it meant rejection; another home, another set of parents.

Scott cleared his throat as if he'd been speaking, pulling one of the boxes into his arms and sitting it in front of him, plopping down indian-style and shredding the tape.

The first box was clothing. An old purple robe, pink trim. He could see her red locks across the back of it, imagining (though not for long, they were only just below) her matching slippers and the smell of pancakes. Jean always made breakfast in that robe.

Even worse, he could smell her. Almost touch her.

"It's probably good that you go through it," Emma stood in the doorway. Cyclops meant to stand but only clutched the robe from the ground, turning to his girlfriend uneasily.

Emma's telekenesis pulled the other Jean boxes to the floor in front of Scott, the tops of each spreading apart. "I'll do it with you if you'd like."

Cyclops said nothing.

"Don't look at me like that, Scott," Frost made her way toward him, uncomfortably lowering herself to the ground beside him. Those heels were expensive. "I'm being serious."

"I didn't say you weren't."

"Darling," Emma pulled his hand into hers, "I love you. If we're ever going to get married I think this is something we need to put behind us... to deal with together."

"...wow," Scott smiled. "Really?"

"No," Emma threw his hand away from her. "I picked up your thoughts the second you started grabbing at that ghastly, moth-ridden robe. I'm going out, Scott," Frost stood. "Be finished when I get home."

"When are you coming home?"

"We have dinner with the Mayor at seven."

"Seven-thirty, then?"

Emma arched an eyebrow. "I'll see you at six."

Scott turned back to the boxes, abandoning the clothing and moving on to a box of framed pictures. Some of them he recognized instantly -- they'd been on display in their Anchorage home at one point, in their cabin behind the Institute at another.

The original team, she and Ororo at the pool (probably in December), a picture of Lorna and Alex, Charles and Jean from God-knows-when and he and Jean on their wedding day.

She'd looked so beautiful.

He dug through the box some more: loose photographs this time; Jubilee and Logan, Kurt and Kitty, various Christmases and birthdays, her parents.

And then at the bottom of the pile, a journal.

It was simple. Leather-bound. The kind of thing you could buy anywhere... or the kind of thing someone could have _bought you _from anywhere. There was no lock, only an olive ribbon tied around it.

Scott ran his fingers along its cover and looked closely at the cracked spine. She'd used it.

Then he began to read.

There was no date, only a few scribbles atop the page to push the ink in her pen back to life.

Summers sighed deeply, decided he wasn't invading Jean's privacy -- they'd shared a psychic rapport -- and continued:

_I've had people tell me I'm the most powerful telepath on the planet. Personally I'd never say that... Charles is much more powerful than I am. I hope.  
__But that's what they've told me.  
__I certainly don't feel like I am. If I were the most powerful telepath on the planet... well, why would I need to write in a journal?  
__That's a trick question. I think if anyone would need to write in a journal it'd be the most powerful telepath on the planet. It's still so hard sometimes... all of the thoughts. __I don't know if hard is the right word for it. I don't find it hard to shut out the thoughts anymore... just... well, tiring.  
__Scott and I are getting married next week. I can't believe it -- after all that we've been through... in the last year alone..._

_I'll finally look at Scott Summers and know that he's my husband. The man I'm going to spend the rest of my life with.  
__I've known that for some time... I probably even knew it when he was too shy to stand in the same room with me. Or when he'd stammer over hello.  
__I can still feel my stomach turn inside out when he walks into the room. Nobody fills out a pair of spandex like my man.  
__But I'm even more excited to see him in his tux. Oh, journal, it's going to be wonderful!_

_God, I could never seriously write that. I understand personifying something you're supposed to be putting your deepest thoughts and desires into... but if I ever start writing like that, well, I'll definitely know I'm not the most powerful telepath on the planet._

_Maybe I should start writing things like that._

_"I'll talk to you soon, journal!"_

_-Jean_

Summers shut the journal again, stood, took one last look at all of the boxes and made his way out of the past.

He'd spend a lot of time there, he'd decided: the journal was full.

But now he had to get ready for dinner with Emma.

* * *


	2. my wife wrote it

**SHADES OF GREY**

_chapter two: my wife wrote it_

* * *

_Dear Journal,_

_I woke up next to my husband today.  
__My husband.  
__That skinny little man in the glasses, so unsure of himself... (although why wouldn't he have been, wearing that skull cap?) has become my __husband__.  
__I should say that I woke up next to my husband in __our__ bed. Our timeline.  
__It's funny. I wonder how many of these journals are bought by people who write about "honeymoons" in alternate timelines, raising and nurturing a child thousands of years in the future.  
__Nathan...  
__Twelve years. We were there for twelve. years.  
__And yet..._

Cyclops placed the ribbon originally tied around Jean's journal through the page he'd been reading, closing the book and looking up at Hank McCoy.

"A little two-thirty in the morning reading, Scottie?"

"...catching up, Hank," Scott looked uneasy. "Spending some time with an old... friend."

"That's Jean's, isn't it?"

Summers stared blankly through his visor.

"I bought it for her," Hank took a seat next to him on the couch stationed in the middle of what had been deemed the Rec Room. "Had no idea it had survived the years."

"You... bought this for her?"

"I did," McCoy smiled somewhat proudly, if not distantly, staring away from Scott as if he were gazing into Jean's grateful green eyes again. "She'd been having a lot of problems -- still coming to terms with the Phoenix, with Madelyne, X-Factor, the love of her life having a child and a wife..."

"I was there."

McCoy sipped his coffee.

"Charles thought it would be good for Jean to... get everything out. There were some things she couldn't tell us. And all those voices... you know, I don't think it was just being a telepath. I think it was dealing with all of the other people she'd been. The things she'd done, felt... no woman should have to..."

"I said I was there, Hank."

"You shouldn't read it."

"It's mine."

"Yours?" McCoy's eyebrow slid up. "I would hardly call it yours, Scott."

"My wife wrote it. She died. It belongs to me now."

"She's only your wife when it's convenient, isn't she?" Hank thrashed himself upward. "You're a widow, Scott. Read it if you'd like, it certainly isn't my place to tell you not to... but don't let Emma hear you call Jean your wife. You do remember the affair you had with Emma before Jean's--"

"I think it's best that you leave," Scott stood, stiff as ever, his visor flaring to match his temper.

McCoy's eyes became slits. "Agreed. Though I've just recalled why it's best to pretend that Jean never lived at all."

Cyclops watched as his friend, though he had other words for Henry McCoy at the moment, ascended a nearby staircase. He wondered if there was something invasive, something wrong, about what he was doing.

It wasn't his journal. Did the fact that Jean had died really make it his? Widow or not, things weren't exactly smooth before her death...

Scott yearned for a simpler time. A time when he'd never question something of Jean's belonging to him... never have to hide in spaces, pretend he weren't reading the love of his life's notes on _her _life while his girlfriend was sleeping.

"This is ridiculous," Scott said as he sat back down, pulled the journal open and skipped a few pages. It somehow made him feel better -- if he were only skimming, well, it wasn't really reading.

No. He had every right to read it. He loved Jean and reminded himself -- yet again --that they shared a psychic rapport. The journal was a refresher course; a trip down memory lane. He'd known it all, at least at one point.

His name caught his eye.

_I told Scott today that he's the one who should be keeping a journal. I know his every thought; every fear, every desire, every triumph... better than he knows them. He's still so unsure of himself.  
__I look at Alex, I feel Alex's insecurity and pain over his older brother's threatening shadow... and I wonder sometimes -- if he really knew that his brother were just as insecure... just as hard on himself...  
__I don't know. I suppose it all goes back to..._

Cyclops flipped through a few more pages.

_We've been in Anchorage for two weeks now. It's beautiful. Silent. Except for that... thing... with the birds. Why is it that Scott and I can sit here for days and days -- eating normal dinners, watching Jeopardy (which isn't very fun for a psychic) and holding one another -- and yet as soon as Bobby, Hank and Warren show up -- bam! Something horrific happens.  
__I think we've made the right choice moving here... leaving the X-Men, at least for now. After what Bastion managed to accomplish, after what he did to Scott, after everything with the Professor... oh, Charles...  
__It was time. Time to be husband and wife.  
__Time to make love at any given hour, not slap on some tights and save the world.  
__Speaking of tights, I slipped on the Phoenix costume a few days ago -- while the boys were here... and I could feel the terror in Scott's lungs. I could feel the fire. The pain, the memories..._

_But it was refreshing.  
__It almost terrified me -- but at the same time it was so very exhilarating. Liberating. Like facing one of your fears and winning.  
__Something's changing inside of me and I can feel it. It isn't bad, not this time... that Jean Grey, that Phoenix -- she wasn't _me_.  
__She was..._

Summers felt his stomach turn for the fifth time. Had that really been the start of it all? The start of Jean's... ascension? Her return to the flames? All those years ago, sitting in Anchorage and pulling out an old costume... he'd witnessed it.

She was right: he had been terrified. She'd told him there was no cause for alarm, that it was only a symbol. But things had happened so quickly after that -- the Professor had called them back, they'd battled Apocalypse, he had (for lack of a better term) _died_.

"Just be thankful it isn't a green mini-skirt and those yellow... _things _I wore on my head," she'd mused. He remembered her comparing it to one of Jennifer Lopez's dresses -- how _had _she gotten those things to stay on, anyway?

"_COME TO BED, DARLING," _Emma interrupted his thoughts. Scott winced.

"_You don't need to yell, Emma_," he thought as he closed the journal. He was in no hurry to argue -- and he had a feeling he wouldn't want to sleep if he'd read what was coming next.


	3. i've read the end

* * *

**SHADES OF GREY**  
_chapter three: i've read the end_

* * *

"Just the usual," Emma Frost nodded as the bouncer removed a rope to the V.I.P. area.

"Oh, I don't get the drinks," he nodded back. "The bar's up—"

Frost concentrated a little harder, the bouncer returning the rope. His smile was wide and he told her he'd be back with her wine. Emma took a seat in the center of the closed room, a small, (self-proclaimed) group of "important people" crowding the dance floor below.

She'd never been there before. It was new, hip and unusually drab for her tastes – but it wasn't home. Emma was hardly in the mood to linger through the halls and discover her boyfriend reading his dead ex's journal.

"Your Chateau Lafitte," the bouncer handed the glass of wine to Emma a few moments later. "I didn't think they were ever going to open the bottle. No dancing tonight, Ms. Holbrook?"

"Not tonight, no," Emma smiled sweetly, pulling the wine to her lips. "I've a bit of reading to catch up on."

"The wine's coming out of my paycheck."

"You're too kind," Emma sat back, concentrating.

"Did you forget your book?"

"That will be all," Emma smiled again.

She didn't need the book.

* * *

Scott peered inside his bedroom while walking by, Jean's journal concealed in his right hand, the bedroom on his left. Emma was gone.

It didn't matter. Things had been tense enough lately anyway, without him reading Jean's journal. He'd barely opened it for a month.

He took a seat on one of the lounge chairs (thanks, Warren) in the Common Room, kicking his feet up in a rare moment of honest relaxation and ease. He'd been waiting for this moment.

Scott pulled the journal out, bringing it close to his face to breathe it in. He wanted to smell her. He needed to – but the journal had spent too much time buried in boxes. It smelled like… a journal.

Summers thumbed through the pages. He hadn't been reading chronologically, instead reading whenever, whatever, caught his ruby quartz at that particular moment.

He stopped at "HE SAID YES." It was written on the top of the page and Scott knew instantly it had been written on a Thanksgiving night while most of the X-Men were busy recovering from Gambit's Southern influence in their feast.

The day Jean asked him to marry him.

"I'm ready for another," Emma summoned the bouncer.

"That was quick."

"Something around here must be," Emma's eyes ran the length of him. "...darling."

* * *

_Yes. He said yes. I suppose you gathered that… but Scott Summers is going to be my husband.  
__Ororo was right. But God, I was so nervous…. How to do it, when to do it. What to say. But then something happened.  
__I hadn't planned for Thanksgiving. But I just knew it was the time. The place. We were walking across the grounds—reminiscing, laughing, and it hit me. Again.  
__What do I have to be more thankful for than Scott Summers? _

_(Besides you, Journal. Of course.)_

Scott smiled to himself.

_He looked so beautiful.  
__I completely forgot the hours of rehearsal (Ororo wasn't quite the convincing Scott, leadership aside) and practically demanded he marry me.  
__After everything our team – our family – has gone through of late, it made perfect sense. No one preservers like the X-Men. And we were the first.  
__Our relationship has changed, grown… it's persevered. _

_He's my world. My Phoenix Force. It can only_

"Jean's journal?"

Scott burst back to reality, back to the present. Ororo Munroe stood beside him, taking a seat and placing a steaming cup of – something – on the table beside his feet. Scott sat up, eyeing the cup.

"Let me guess," he leaned forward. "Wakandan?"

"San Franciscan," Ororo took a sip of her own cup. "Starbucks. But I poured it into our own glasses – it seems much more sincere that way."

"Thank you," Scott grinned and took a sip. He stared at the steam. "You pretended you were me? When Jean was—"

"I knew this day would come," Ororo laughed to herself.

"Where was I?"

"Asleep. Jean insisted we rehearse with your visor. And once in your sunglasses, as I recall. She wasn't sure which you'd be wearing."

"I slept through you _stealing _my visor?"

"You _were _dealing with Cairo's finest thief, Scott," Storm smiled. "And about to be engaged to one of the world's strongest telepaths. You stood no chance, old friend – especially with the way you sleep when it's raining."

Scott grinned. "You were quite the team."

Ororo's soft hand gloved Scott's. "You were, too."

"Team's change," Emma appeared in the doorway. "You've been on what, Storm? The X-Men, your little band of X.S.E. … The Fantastic Four, wasn't that impressive?"

Storm removed her hand.

"And now, _my _team. Lest we forget, darling."

"Emma," Scott stood.

"Cyclops," she nodded. "Shouldn't you be nursing your cat in—"

The windows blew open, shattering against the wall. Storm stood, stepping past Scott and moving toward Emma. She stood a few centimeters from Frost's lips.

"It's always two steps backward with you, isn't it, Emma?"

"You're paying for that."

"Charge my country," Storm placed her hand on Emma's shoulder. "Little Queen." Ororo turned. "Enjoy your evening, Scott. You may want to get Emma a _shaw_l – she'd be more comfortable that way."

Emma charged forward, Ororo making her leave. "I want you to get rid of it."

"And I want you to ease up," Scott picked up the journal. "I'm with you, Emma. Aren't you tired of this song and dance?"

"More than you know," she tensed.

Scott's visor flared.

"Would you kiss your mother with those thoughts, Mr. Summers?"

"Goodnight, Emma," Scott made his way toward the doorway.

"Scott?"

Summers stopped. He didn't turn.

"I've read the end, darling.

She dies."

* * *

Cyclops settled into a spare bedroom, threw his shirt in the corner and climbed in the bed. He replaced his sunglasses with the goggles he wore while sleeping and opened the journal again.

He forced his way through an entry about Logan, reread an entry about Jean's father and paused briefly to brood about Emma. He erected the best psychic barrier he could, a gift from Jean that kept on giving, but placed the journal beside him.

He glanced down at the page – it was a page or two after the one written on that particular Thanksgiving night. Jean had written her name, rewritten her name, and written it again.

_Jean Grey_

_Jean G. Summers (no)_

_Jean Summers_

_Jean Grey-Summers – perfect._

He couldn't agree more.

* * *


End file.
